Chip,I agree with negke, the news page isn't as exciting as it should be. I also agree that it might benefit from a bit of rearrangement. The "Random Booths" takes too much room and should be at the bottom,
after the latest news.
Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about the "Random Booths" section. I might be wrong, but I'm not sure they'll be a lot of people out there just randomly clicking on those. Most people will simply go to the full booths list or simply click "next" and "previous" within booths. Maybe the "added by" line could be at least left out. Same thing for the "Events," particularly since, at this point, the descriptions are cut (apparently) randomly. Maybe just the name of the event might suffice (in a bold and differently-clored font, maybe?). I guess the events could maybe still be on the top (so as to grab attention), but they could be arranged on a horizontal line that takes the whole width (so it'd be pretty short) and surrounded, say, by a square line, so as to stand out from the news.
Also, it might be useful to have some agreement on the font/font size of the news entry. Maybe this could be done automatically.
The description of the event, at the very top, is a little awkward. Maybe your nice logo at the bottom could be brought back up as a "banner title"? The description could then be just under, maybe compressed into one single paragraphs instead of two?
Previous QExpos had pictures on the front page. I think that might be a good way to attract attention. I was tempted to put a youtube video, then didn't because I didn't want my entry to stand out oddly. Maybe we could agree that all news can have, say, one picture of a specific maximum format? I think it'd really help in making the news section more attractive. I'll wait to see that you think before putting up one.
Just my two cents, of course, and mostly aesthetic stuff. You've been doing an excellent job, Chip!
